116 HUMANITY MADE TO ORDER collective farms. The plan called for collectiviza- tion of the entire agricultural industry by the end of 1933. When the government tried to carry out this plan it met an irresistible force of opposition among the peasants, especially among the kulaks. The government went about confiscating all the belongings of the well-to-do farmers and put them at the disposal of the kolkhoz. The farmers retali- ated in a way that was disastrous to themselves and to the Russian people as a whole. When Stalin's order for collectivization was issued, the peasants began killing their livestock and consuming the meat, because they knew they would get nothing for it by putting it into the kolkhoz. Within a few months' time they managed to kill from 30 to 40 per cent of the total livestock of Russia, which had already been diminished by other causes to 50 per cent of the pre-war level. The government, in order to stop this wholesale slaughter, decreed that the killing of cattle was a counter-revolutionary act, carrying with it a penalty of death. (This killing of the livestock was the main cause for the great scarcity of meat in Russia for many years, and only recently has the govern- ment been able to supply the Russian people with meat.)